Your customers have a lot of choices on where to shop. That’s why it’s important to differentiate yourself and keep your business in the forefront of your customers’ minds. Email marketing is a simple and effective way to do this. By regularly sending emails to your customers, it reminds them of your services and can inform them quickly of any upcoming promotions.

Why Email Marketing Matters

Email marketing is cost-effective, produces immediate, measurable results, and can result in a high return on investment. It is suitable for any business (of any size or budget), and can be used to enhance any other marketing technique your business currently implements. It will also allow your business to quickly reach most of your clients at once, which is usually a great idea around the holidays or before a large sale.

How to Encourage More Sign-Ups

To encourage email sign-ups, promote it on your social media pages, have a simple sign-up button on your mobile-friendly website, and offer a promotion when customers sign up for emails (such as a discount on their next purchase). Once people sign up for your email or newsletters list, you can begin promoting to them. However, it’s important to make your email stand out so that customers are more likely to read them.

Writing a Better Email

There are several ways to write a more effective email. Keep your email brief, genuine, and clear. Most people receive many emails throughout the day, so they don’t have time to read long emails. Stick to the point and let them know how your product, service, or promotion can benefit their lives. Create an effective subject line that clearly states what the message is about and will entice customers to read the email. Lastly, create an effective call to action that entices the reader to act.

Your email should be personal, relevant, and written as if you are speaking to your customers directly (so, don’t over complicate it). It should also be mobile friendly, in this way customers can clearly read your email anytime, anywhere. Good content can strengthen the customer relationship and begin effective communication through a promotion, announcement, greeting, or thank you letter.

Marketing Automation Solutions

If your business is interested in taking advantage of email marketing, but simply does not have the resources to do so, consider marketing automation solutions. With marketing automation software, customized deals and discounts can be automatically emailed to your customers. The software can automatically assess customer shopping and purchase patterns to determine what the most effective promotions will be for that particular customer.

Marketing automation solutions can also systematically send emails to customers thanking them for their continued business, which can increase customer loyalty and encourage them to visit again soon. This will vastly improve the effectiveness of your promotions and increase your revenue in no time.Contact SalesVufor more information on how our marketing automation and complete business management solutions can improve your email marketing efforts.

Finding a new customer takes significantly more time, money, and effort than it does to keep an existing customer. That’s why it’s so important to cherish your customer relationships and take measures to ensure they visit more often and encourage others to shop at your business as well. We have provided some tips to help improve customer interaction and engagement so that you can create customers for life.

Provide a Great Experience

If your customers aren’t happy with their experience, they will shop elsewhere. Make sure your team is as enthusiastic as you are to provide great customer service and promote your brand.

Listen to Your Customers

Your customers want to be heard. They know how to improve the shopping experience, so why not ask for their advice? By letting customers know that you care about what they think and want to improve the shopping experience for them, they will be more likely to visit more often. Leave a suggestion box, encourage online communication, and reply to customers’ questions, requests, and suggestions regularly so they know you are listening.

Engage Online

One way that all businesses, large and small, can compete on an equal playing field is online. Any business can establish a strong online presence, if they offer valuable information, a helpful website, and effective social media business pages. Keeping your mobile-friendly website and social media pages updated with valuable content and promos will remind customers of your presence and inform them of any upcoming deals or store events. In fact, studies have shown that customers who engage with a brand online spend approximately 20% more on that brand.

Create Viral Promotions

SalesVu offers marketing automation software, so you can make money effortlessly with automatic marketing campaigns designed to meet your customers’ needs. By first analyzing your customers purchase patterns, the software can customize the right deals and promotions for each customer. This can take the time and guesswork out of marketing to customers. The service takes no effort on your part and your customers will be subtly reminded to visit your store in the near feature.

Loyalty Programs

Thanking your customers can go a long way towards their future shopping patterns. Consider sending thank you cards or automatic emails letting customers know you appreciate their business. Loyalty programs are also mutually beneficial for both your business and your customers. They will encourage your customers to visit more often so that they can earn more points for a prize or discount, which can increase customer retention and sales in no time. This is also a simple way to collect customers’ information, including their phone number and email address, for future promotions.

Analyze Purchase Patterns

The best way to meet and exceed your customers’ expectations is to analyze their purchase patterns. This will help you quickly determine what is working and what needs to be improved. Contact SalesVu to find out how we can automate this important step for you with customer relationship management software and POS solutions designed to fit your business.

A happy employee is a productive employee. When your staff is happy, they are able to better meet your business needs, provide customers with an exceptional experience, and are more willing to go the extra mile. This can improve both customer and employee retention and loyalty.

Train Them Well

Properly training employees is an important step in getting them more engaged and interested in what they’re doing. Your workforce should know how to explain every product in your inventory, so that they can successfully answer questions and upsell products to customers. When your employees know the products well, they can promptly inform customers of how different products can benefit their lives, which is the first step to making a compelling sales pitch.

Engage Your Workers

Get your workers engaged. Let them call some of the shots, encourage their suggestions, and find other ways to get them more interested in their work. Encourage them to interact with customers more. Not only does this help pass the workday more quickly, but it also helps foster a better relationship between the customer and your employee, leading to more customer and employee retention.

Ask for Feedback

If there is something bothering an employee, they aren’t as satisfied or productive. Keep an open line of communication with your workforce so that they feel comfortable addressing issues of concern or room for improvement. They may have unique suggestions to help your business, and will feel like they are being heard and understood.

Reward Employees for a Job Well Done

Have fun challenges and reward incentives for employees to look forward to. Rewarding employees doesn’t always have to cost money, but offering prizes offers added incentives for employees to sell more and increase their productivity. Even a word of encouragement can go a long way. Recognize their contributions, encourage their helpfulness, offer positive feedback and constructive criticism, and let them know that they are appreciated and are making a difference. They will be more inclined to work harder and take more pride in their work.

Mandatory Breaks

Taking a break during the workday is every employee’s right. But it’s more than just that. It’s their time to break away from the stress of work to clear their head, refocus their priorities, and return to the workday refreshed, ready to face the work ahead, and more productive.

Get a POS System

With a POS system, your employees can do things like answer questions, make upsell recommendations, and even ring up sales from anywhere around the store or restaurant. This intuitive software can allow you to take your business with you, so your workforce can access business operations and reporting all from their tablet or mobile phone.

You can also take advantage of employee scheduling and management software, which can help you quickly find discrepancies and trends among your workforce. To begin making better business decisions, increasing productivity, and simplifying your business operations, contact SalesVu about our all-in-one business management solution.

Upselling is an important part of any business. By recommending the right additional products to customers, your business can enjoy increased sales, increased revenues, and more satisfied customers. However, becoming too pushy or using the wrong sales tactics can turn customers away. That’s why we’ve provided some tips to help you upsell more successfully.

Thoroughly Train Your Employees

It is important to make appropriate suggestions based on what your customer has purchased, ordered, or is interested in. Your employees or servers should be well versed on the products in inventory so that they can better explain them to customers and find the appropriate complementary items or accessories.

Provide Useful Suggestions

If possible, suggest more than one item. Giving customers a choice makes them feel more in control and will make them more likely to purchase one of the complementary items. If there are items that are generally purchased together, then consider creating a package deal or have your employees recommend the bestselling duo whenever a customer purchases one of the items. For instance, if they are purchasing electronics, your employees can recommend batteries, cases, or other accessories to complement their new electronics.

Make Yourself Known

Greet your customers as they walk in the door, get to know them, find out why they came, and make yourself readily available in case they have questions. If possible, engage in conversation regarding what they are purchasing, without following them around the store.

Read Your Customer

Not every customer wants to buy more than what they came in for. Pushing a sale on a customer who is unlikely to buy anything will only scare them away from your business altogether. Learn to read your customers, so that you can tailor your approach to better suit their needs.

Be Prepared

Many people feel nervous about upselling or suggesting items to customers. Provide your employees with a suggestion on how to approach customers. Some businesses even script out a compelling sales pitch, which employees can use and change as they please.

Leave Goodies By the Register

There is a reason that stores put irresistible sweets and affordable finds near the register. While people are spending time in line or at the register, give them something to be tempted by. Your employees can easily mention the small goodies to customers. You can also offer incentives, such as discounts when a customer hits a certain price point. This will make them more likely to increase their order or buy the little items by the register.

Invest in a POS System

A POS system can take all of the guesswork out of upselling. It will recommend the right products to suggest based on the customer’s purchases. This will make employees feel more confident selling those items. With a POS system, your employees can also pull up all items in inventory (and information relating to those items), so that they can quickly answer any questions about the products. Contact SalesVu to begin benefitting from a POS system and upselling more.

If you’ve considered making the switch to POS, it may be one of the most impactful things you can do for your small business. The easy-to-use software can help you seamlessly run your business from anywhere, anytime. Whether you have one small boutique or a number of large retail stores around the country, a POS system can be customized to fit your needs. The system can pay for itself in no time with increased revenues, a larger client base, and more time to spend with your customers.

Quick Checkout Process

Instead of having to wait in line for an open register, your customers can check out from anywhere in the store with mobile POS technology. This is a fast, highly convenient option for both your customer and employees, and can lead to more on-the-spot sales. It will also reduce the chances of a customer walking out because they don’t want to wait in line to pay for their purchase.

Answer Questions On the Spot

Imagine having all the information on products and items in inventory at your fingertips. With mobile POS, you can answer any questions customers may have about your products and services. This can help employees engage more meaningfully with customers, creating more customer loyalty, customer retention, and even employee retention.

Effortlessly Upsell

With a POS system, your employees will know exactly which products will work well with what your customers are already interested in. This can take the guesswork out of upselling and will give your employees more confidence when they are selling a product.

Send Orders to the Right Place

When it comes to a restaurant, bar, café, or fine dining establishment, things can quickly get out of control if the front and back of the house are not in sync. With a POS system, each order can go to the correct area. Employees can easily open multiple tabs, split checks, accept payment, and more – all from an iPad or mobile device. This can save a huge amount of time, help your business run more efficiently, and provide your employees with the tools they need to succeed.

Gain Complete Insight into Your Business

With a POS system, you can gain complete insight into your business, inventory, and customer purchase patterns. It can also help with things like table management, inventory management, employee management, customer tracking, marketing automation, accounting, and more. This can help you make better business decisions, replenish inventory before it’s too late, and anticipate your customers’ needs.
Join the New Age

Many small businesses are now enjoying the overwhelming benefits of POS technology. Offering your customers these same options can provide them with the quick, convenient shopping experience they want and expect. Dated machinery and practices can slow down your business and show customers that you are not keeping up with your competitors’ technology. So contact SalesVu to find out how you can start taking advantage of affordable POS software today.

The holidays are right around the corner, so it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to prepare your business for the busy shopping season. Your customers want to feel cheery during the holiday season and, fortunately, you don’t have to spend much to decorate your business and get in the holiday spirit.

DIY Decorations

Go for subtle, but expressive, decorations that add a modern, classy flare to your storefront. Stick to traditional holiday color palettes, like red and green, blue and white, or silver and gold. Encourage employees to decorate their areas, while being aware of others’ space and religious sensitivities. Consider a team decorating event or contest, so your employees can feel more pride in where they work and what they’ve done to ring in the holidays.

Get Your Customers Involved

Some of the most successful holiday promotions and branding efforts involve some form of customer interaction. Whether your customers get to leave their name on a snowflake after a donation, can make suggestions for holiday décor on your social media, or can win freebies and goodies with their holiday purchases, find a way to get your customers involved.

Create Gift Sets

If you are trying to sell more items from inventory, consider creating gift sets. This can include something like a customer favorite with a less popular item to entice customers to try new things, while turning over inventory much more quickly. Make sure to also offer special deals, free shipping, or other ways of enticing your customers to shop at your business more both during and after the holidays.

Replenish Your Inventory

The last thing you want is to run out of inventory during the holidays. When your customers want to purchase a gift, if your business is out of stock, they will just go elsewhere. This is a busy time of year and the last thing your customers want is to have to come back twice for the same thing. Get control of your inventory with our inventory management tools so you know what your customers love most and never have to worry about running out again.

Update Your Packaging

Try updating your packaging to include winter scenes and non-religious holiday elements, such as snowflakes and snowmen. This can make your product instantly themed or limited edition, and more appealing to customers who want to get in the holiday spirit.

Establish Your Online Presence

Make sure your customers know where to find you online, so you can inform them of holiday promotions quickly and effectively. Consider updating your website or e-commerce site to feature holiday-related designs or content to bring holiday cheer to every aspect of your business.

Keeping good records can be very confusing. When you’re tracking sales, inventory, or payments manually, you need to worry about basic human errors, wasted time, and misplaced records. Inventory management software can take care of all the work for you with automatic inventory tracking based on manual, POS, and/or e-commerce sales.

Easy to Use, Intuitive, Accurate

Inventory management software is easy to use, easy to implement, and easy to succeed with. You can quickly add products to the inventory using bulk import, barcode scanner, or by printing labels. You can make the software work for you by sorting inventory by items, categories, departments, and more.

Increase Productivity

By not having to track, manage, and verify inventory manually, you can save time, frustration, and effort. Instead of having to manually track sales and inventory changes, the system will automatically update inventory counts when sales are made for more accurate, effortless reporting.

The software will help increase productivity, efficiency, and accuracy in reporting. It can also make inventory ordering much easier, more efficient, and more cost-effective. It can even help you transfer inventory from one store to another and email your vendors and suppliers when specific inventory is getting low to save you more time.

Anticipate Your Customers’ Needs

With automatic inventory tracking, you can determine what your customers love the most, so you can keep your restaurant, bar, or business stocked at all times. You can even set re-order alerts so you never have to run out of an item again. This will also help your business avoid buying too much product and having wasted inventory.

Detect Discrepancies

With inventory management software, you can realize at a moment’s glance what is entering your business, what is leaving it, and how much money you are making or losing. If there is a difference between actual and reported inventory, it will be instantly noticeable. So you can get to the root of the problem right away.

Automated Reporting

With intuitive inventory management software, you can receive automatic reporting on the profit margin, total cost of inventory, cost of goods sold over time, customer purchase patterns, and more. These important figures can help your business determine what your most profitable products and services are, what isn’t selling, and what has gone missing. This can help you more easily make informed business decisions going forward.

POS Systems With Inventory Management Capabilities

With the holiday season just around the corner, it is especially important to pursue effective inventory management to ensure you are fully stocked when shoppers are looking to make all their favorite purchases. The easiest way to take advantage of an effective inventory management system is through your POS system.Contact SalesVuto find out other ways an inventory management and all-in-one POS system can benefit your business.

With more than 1/3 of the population consisting of Millennials, everyone is online. They shop online, search for service providers online, and even spend all their free time on the web. Therefore, if your business is not set up to accept online payments, online purchases, and other online communication, you could be missing out on a significant amount of sales and revenue.

Your Customers Crave Convenience

In today’s day and age, shoppers want more than just quality products at affordable prices. They want convenience, simplicity, and a fast solution. When they want to purchase something quickly or receive instant gratification from a payment, if your business can’t support them, they may go elsewhere. With online payments, potential customers can make a purchase anytime, anywhere for optimal convenience.

Don’t Lose Your Customers to the Competition

After offering promotions all year, paying for marketing and advertising solutions, and pursuing other means of attracting new customers to your business, the last thing you want is for them to leave your site frustrated once they come to the checkout process. You may end up scaring away a potential customer simply because they can’t make payments on your site.

Keep Up With the Competition

Most businesses realize that online payments are a basic necessity for most small businesses and e-commerce sites. If you want to keep up with the competition, you need to offer this service as well. Otherwise, your customers may end up just taking their business to your competitors.

Take Advantage of Quick, Convenient Transactions

An online purchase and payment requires very little effort from your business. You don’t need to greet the customer at the door, ring up their sales, assist with questions, take payment information through the phone or email, or anything else pertaining to the sale. So not taking advantage of these simple, convenient purchases is like throwing money away.

Get Onboard With Online Payments Now

As the holiday season nears, it is especially important to get on board with online payments. People are typically shopping at all times of the day and night online to quickly get gifts for everyone on their list. Don’t you want to realize some of those sales?

Your business should be able to accept online payments, gift cards, loyalty rewards cards, and other means of payments that your customers are interested in. Over time, it will lead to reduced operational costs, more sales, higher customer satisfaction, and access to a global market. Contact SalesVu for more information on how you can boost sales, optimize the checkout process, quickly set up an e-commerce site, and start accepting online payments right away.

A strong, organized online marketing campaign is an integral part of any business plan. A valuable tool in your online marketing campaign is social media. While social media pages may not cost much (or anything at all), they do require an investment of time to ensure they are kept updated, remain current on industry trends, and are responsive to customer needs and inquiries.

The top online marketing strategies include:

SEO

Local SEO

Social Media Management

Pay-per-click

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Each business can benefit from a unique combination of these top marketing strategies. However, social media management is important for almost any business, regardless of the industry, business size, or clientele.

Why Is Social Media So Important?

Millennials now control the majority of the population. Therefore, your business needs to cater to them. And where do Millennials spend most of their time online? Social media sites. It is where they spend their free time, search for products and services, and engage with companies and brands they love. Your business needs to be there to interact with them and gain their business.

One way for small businesses to compete with large brands and conglomerates is through social media. By making your business pages, website, and/or e-commerce store user-friendly, informative, and aesthetically pleasing, your customers will be more likely to visit, even over their usual service providers.

Results May Not Be Immediately Apparent

It can be difficult to connect a measurable return on investment to your social media accounts. However, this is not the main benefit of social media. Rather, it is a platform to help you promote your content, services, and knowledge.

By promoting helpful, valuable content, your business can connect with a larger audience and more easily display your industry knowledge and expertise, making customers more likely to trust your business. It is also a way for your business to connect with customers over time and continue to build a relationship with them that will lead to long-term loyalty.

Interact With Different Networks

Many businesses decide to join in on the social media bandwagon, but then put all their eggs in one basket. The best way to reach your target audience quickly and effectively is to promote your content and website on more than one social network. This will ensure that more potential customers and search engines notice it now. While your business may not necessarily need to maintain an active Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn page all at once, the more networks you participate in, the more people you will connect with and the more diverse the people’s interests, demographics, and expectations will be.

Be Patient and Seek Assistance

You won’t build a strong online and social media presence overnight. However, with time and consistent postings, your business can stand apart from the crowd online, which can generate more real customers. If you aren’t sure how to set up your business profile, you can find free assistance online to guide you through it. You can also contact us for more information and to find out how other online marketing and business management solutions can further improve business efficiency and increase your customer base.

Every business has a slow period at some time or another. Whether that slow period lasts a day, a week, or a season can be dependent on a number of factors. SalesVu automated marketing features can help your business upsell and overcome any rainy day. Besides, having a rainy day plan in place can help during these slow periods so that you are still able to reduce your inventory and increase sales and revenues.

Engage More Online

Engaging more with customers through online and social media outlets will remind them that you are still open for business, offering sales, and adjusting your business to fit your customer needs. This may also be the time of year where you send your customers a “thank you” and let them know you appreciate their business and reminding them to visit again.

Engaging with customers online will help reduce slow days and help your business better anticipate customer behavior. Once your employees form a better relationship with your customers, they can make better suggestions and have more potential to increase sales.

Get Customer Feedback

Have you been meaning to fix up your website, e-commerce store, or Facebook business page? Take advantage of this slow time to catch up on your social media accounts so that you have solid content and a strong online presence. This will also allow you to quickly interact more with customers, connect with a new audience, and reach out to your contacts. Most importantly, by getting customer feedback, you can find out if your business is slow due to the economy or something that your business can address.

Rewards and Referral Programs

If you currently have a loyalty program in place, remind your customers that the more often they visit, the more points and rewards they can earn. You may also consider implementing a referral program, so that your loyal customers enjoy a reward and you enjoy a new customer for every referral.

Start Brainstorming

Start planning campaigns now that can be implemented when business picks up again. This way, once business increases again, you are prepared for growth and know how to leverage the increase in sales and customers. Begin by reviewing your business plan to see what your goals are and what the next steps are to achieve them. Next, organize your ideas to identify potential business opportunities that require attention.

Having a rainy day fund set aside can sustain your business through the slow times. Start planning for that now, saving for that during the busy times, and the slow times won’t feel so bad.

Tackle the Small Stuff

If there is something your business has been putting off, such as a frustrating task, now is the time to do it. You can also take advantage of the free time by cleaning house, organizing inventory, and giving your business a facelift with a new storefront design or décor.

If you have not yet taken advantage of all that technology has to offer, such as a POS system, appointment management and scheduling system, or automated marketing options look into it now so your business is prepared for the upcoming upswing in growth. Contact us for more information on how our software can assist both during the busy and slow periods.